Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Sukhlal Sanghavi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 62

The Nature and the Cause of the World
phenomenon of recognition?-that too is a question. The Buddhists submit that unlike the Nyäya-Vaisesika and Jaina who while considering atoms quâ substance to be absolutely separate from one another attribute stability to a new composite substance or aggregate and regard it as an object of unitary cognition they themselves positno such long-standing composite substance or aggregate that might become an object of recogni. tion. However, whatever portion of a series produces in a viewer a sense of similarity in respect of that much protion he out of illusion develops a unitary cognition. On the other hand, personages like Tathagata etc, in whom there has arisen an inner-wisdom view each and every property as verily separate from one another. But such an ultimate separation is no object of cognition on the part of a physical eye -- so that ordinary people conduct all practical usage on the basis of similarity or an illusory unitary-cognition. 18
In the end, two other thought-currents as to the nature of the world also deserve mention. Of these, one has arisen in connection with the Buddhist tradition, the other in connection with the Upanişadic tradition. The two thought-currents basically differ as to fundamental principles and they also differ as to the method of explanation, and yet even while empl. oying different words the two propound almost one and the same doctrine. The visible multiplicity exhibiting difference of colur etc. is accounted for by the Mahāyānist thought-current as a superimposition wrought by ignorance or a concealed-truth. This account commonly fits the advocate Vijñādavāda as well as Sūnyavāda whereas Sankara-the advocate of Kevaladvaita (absolute nondualism)-accounts for the world by calling it a product of illusion (=māyā). When the Mahāyānist thought-current calls the world ignorance-born concealed truth its purport is that this visible gross and subtle external world where difference predominates is not something real but merely appears to be so owing to the mental impressions left behind by ignorance or nescience. On the view of Sankara too the visible world made up of names and forms is not something real but merely appears to be seated in its substratum in the form of a product of illusion.
We have earlier seen that the Sankhya teachers, basing themselves on the ever-present experience of pleasure, pain and delusion, posited in the form of its ultimate cause the sole element Pradhāna which is ubiquitous and made up of three guņas and thus accounted for the multifariousness visible there in the world; on the other hand, the Jaina, Nyāya-Vajśesika and Sthaviravādi-Buddhist, treating as real the properties like colour, taste, smell, touch etc. amenable to sense-perception, gave on the basis thereof thought to the causal-series pertaining to these properties and in the end some posited
18
The Tattvasangraha, section Sthirabhāvapariksä, kärikäs 350-475 and Hetubindutikā. pp. 141ff,